Michigan Enforces Do-Not-Email Registry Law

elanghe writes "The Michigan Attorney General filed suit against two companies sending adult-oriented email messages to the state's children, in violation of the Michigan Children's Protection Registry. A similar law in Utah is being challenged by the porn industry. While the FTC, influenced by the Direct Marketing Association, rejected the idea of a do-not-email registry, have these two states proven anti-spam laws like these — unlike CAN-SPAM — really have teeth?"

Re:The Love of Money

[Silver Sloth]

Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy. Also, the article isn't clear about the Utah law. It could be using those nice, vague terms that make the law unenforceable and could even target e-mail that was solicited. Remember, people sometimes identify items as spam that really are not.

I don't know about Utah, and IANAL, but here in the UK, you do get prosecuted for sending snailmail pr0n, there are quite stringent laws about what can, and can't be sent via snail mail for this very reason.

Cart ahead of the horse

[davmoo]

have these two states proven anti-spam laws like these -- unlike CAN-SPAM -- really have teeth?"

Folks, we're putting the proverbial cart *way* ahead of the horse here. This law doesn't have teeth until it produces a win in a courtroom. In the US, I can file a suit against anyone reading this message just because I don't like you're hair color...but that doesn't mean I'm going to win that suit.

Re:How about

[$RANDOMLUSER]

And when you're spamflooding through a Russian botnet, how exactly does one determine that the target email address belongs to a "think of teh children"?

Re:I just don't understand...

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

Why even put your email address somewhere public in the first place?

Whitelisting is very impractical for people that do email support of any kind, even if its just being the leader/owner of a website or project. Sometimes people need to contact you, and frankly email is still the best way.

Re:The Love of Money

[Rydia]

The supreme court has drawn a clear distinction between speech that can be censored by parents and speech that can't. You can send whatever in snail mail because, the court reasoned, adults have an opportunity to ensure that it doesn't reach the family proper by censoring it at the mailbox. The situation with spam is much more complicated. It'd make an interesting case.

Re:The Love of Money

[Gorm the DBA]

Would you be so kind as to cite the portion of the Constitution that excludes "adult oriented" from the first amendment?

"Obscene" is a legally defined (albeit very loosey goosey and hard to know exactly where the line is) term, but the mere fact that material is of interest to Adults does not exempt it from First Amendment protection.

In this case, the issue is that Interstate Commerce is involved. You're attempting to subject a company based in, let's say Maine, to Utah's laws, becase an e-mail address that is not clearly marked as belonging to someone in Utah (let's say "@gmail.com") does. That's exactly the kind of thing that is supposed to be within the purview of Federal Regulation, not State powers.

Otherwise, what keeps South Carolina from saying "Anyone that provides an e-mail advocating kissing shall be publically flogged, unless they pay us $20 per e-mail address they want to send this to to check it against our list of folks who think girls have cooties". It's the same exact law

Re:The Love of Money

[castoridae]

Yeah - but in Vegas, notice how they have to stand in those little slices of land between the casino properties - city-owned land - because casino security won't let them distribute it on their private property which extends all the way to the street.

Funny how that works; the CASINOS of all entities are the ones enforcing "decency." :-)

Re:I'm in Michigan

[laffer1]

If you sell any items you have to check unless you like jailtime.

From their website:

  Under the law, "a person shall not send, cause to be sent, or conspire with a third party to send a message to a contact point that has been registered for more than 30 calendar days with the department if the primary purpose of the message is to, directly or indirectly, advertise or otherwise link to a message that advertises a product or service that a minor is prohibited by law from purchasing, viewing, possessing, participating in, or otherwise receiving."

The covered categories of messages include, but are not necessarily limited to:

        * Alcohol (MCL 436.1701)
        * Tobacco (MCL 722.641)
        * Pornography or Obscene Material (MCL 722.673-722.677, MCL 750.142-750.143, 47 USC 231(e)(6))
        * Gambling (MCL 432.218)
        * Illegal Drugs (MCL 333.7401)
        * Firearms (MCL 750.223,MCL 28.422)

Marketers who fail to comply with the law face criminal penalties of up to three years in jail, and criminal fines of up to $30,000. In addition, marketers may face civil penalties of up to $5,000 per message sent in violation of the law, to a maximum of $250,000 per day. Civil suits may be filed by the Michigan attorney general, Internet service providers, and parents on behalf of their children.

Re:The Love of Money

[Anonymous Coward]

"Free speech? I do not see them slapping fines on people for unsolicited snail mail. And trust me, you can get a lot of that crap and getting addresses is really damn easy."

Junk fax laws [wikipedia.org] withstood legal challeges based on the first amendment. I can't see e-mail-related laws being any different in this respect.

Re:The Love of Money

[Electrum]

I would recommend just hitting the company that owns the last server to forward the e-mail. If they can't provide/prove another source from which the e-mail came, hit them with the $10,000 fine. I would wager that companies would be awful quick to clamp down their SMTP servers and keep records of where everything came from. Not only would this increase a company's security but it would reduce much of the spam you see that has a legitimate address from a careless company.

This only hurts ISPs. Watch the way an e-mail hops from router to router, point to point, on the "information super highway". Your statement almost screams, "I do not understand networks or the internet." This is unreasonable and puts blame on providers because of the actions of their users.

His post was dead-on. It is you who does not understand how email works. Mail is not normally relayed. All relays need to be secure and correctly identify the sender.

Re:I'm in Michigan

[Secrity]

You don't have to check the email address if you have the permission of the holder of the email addess, you will have permission of the holder of the email address, won't you? If you don't have permission, then you will be a spammer -- and are fair game.

Re:The Love of Money

[norman619]

I suggest you try using your Gmail account when registering for different forums and such. You will find after doign this on a few sites you will start to get hammered. No spam filter can get rid of the majority of spam. That's a pipe dream. Only way to get rid of spam on your system is to set your email app to only allow email form your contact/address list to get through. If they are not on either list they get tossed into the trash. I have 2 domains. Both email addresses listed in the whois info are hammered with junk. All the other email accounts I have created which are not posted for all the world to see are junk free. Only becasue I don't use them for anything other than business. I use a special junk account when applying for membership to different sites. Big suprise it's become the mother of all junkmail magnets. Mind you the places I sign up with claim to not sell or share your address with anyone if you select this little box telling them no. LOL!!! You also can't control what others do with your email address. :-) Your claim that "better filters" will reduce the problem is not true. The best draconian filters will stop the email but they will also add some administrative tasts to your email exp. The best practice is not to hand out your regular email to anyone other than those you truest. Do not use it to register with ANY website other than banking stitutions and so on. Maintain a current list of contacts and block all but the people on this list in. It's a pain but you can have a junk free email in box. It's something akin to what China does. It's not a bad idea but you have to be willing to maintain your filters. If you don't you will miss important emails and give up on it.

Re:The Love of Money

[Kaikopere]

I use a special junk account when applying for membership to different sites.

For sites that need a "real" e-mail address to get in touch with me, I use http://sneakemail.com/ [sneakemail.com] Everyone gets a unique address, so when the spam hits, I know where the spammer found the address. If someone starts abusing the privilege of being able to communicate with me electronically, I shut off the e-mail address, as one of my credit card companies discovered recently. All in all a very useful service for those of us that are too busy to set it up for ourselves.